USA > Pennsylvania > Washington County > The courts of justice, bench & bar of Washington County, Pennsylvania > Part 3
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3
0
13
0
0
574 14 14
Brought Forward
574
14 14
June 15 Paid Mr. Lindley for plank and Scantlin 1 12 Sept. 15 Paid Mr. Cook for Sawing 300 feet Scaf- fle boards and 2325 of lathes and 100 feet sawing. 4 14
23 Paid John Cotton for 325 feet season boards
1 4
43
Oct. 6 Paid John Reed mason for building Corthouse Steps
4
0
10 Paid Alex McCoy for 16 days work.
2 0
0
Nov. 3 Paid John McQueston for Tending Reed Paid Barnes for hueing timber for Cort- house steps
12
Paid John McQueston for work
4
4
6. 0
Paid Huston for 18 perch Stone for Corthouse steps
5
8
0
1788
Paid old Cox for Living at Cooks
1 4 0
8 0 0
1 0 0
3 11 8
June 14 Paid James Chambers for hueing timber July 28 Paid James McCluney as pr Bill
4 14
.
10
0
4
12 6
Ap. 1st Paid David Dilly for 2000 ft Dry boards Paid Captain Huse for Shingle Timber
OUR FIRST COURT-HOUSE.
21
Sept. 25 Paid John Dilly for 650 feet boards Paid John Whiton for 60 feet boards
2 12 6
5 0
Oct. 4 Paid John Baird for 563 feet boards_ 2 9 6
Do for Drawing 2 loads from Cannons- mil
1 8
0
6 James Demint Do for 1000 feet boards 3 15 0 Paid Marts for 1000 brick. 1 15 0
1 0
0
31 Paid James White for Drying boards __ Paid for 6 quarts whisky White drank Nov. 4 Do 1 quart
6
0
Dec. 12 Paid James Wilson for 44 loads stone .. 1
2
0
22 Paid Samuel Dilly for half inch plank __
1 19 9
27 Paid James Lin for drawing plank. 2 19
6
1789
Jany 3 Paid Samuel Shannon for Smithwork .. 18 14 2
Feby 11 Paid Thomas Pew for 1500 feet inch boards and 960 of half inch Ditto
8 14 6
Paid James Wilson for drawing wood to dry boards
5
0
Paid Winton for painting doors and windows
12
1
Paid Reeds fool for making the Circle over the Councel Table.
3 9
Paid James Reed for Carpenter work in Cort
9 16
10
Paid Mr. Cunningham for whisky glass and sprigs
2
3 10
Paid John Whiten for 8 days tending mason
1 0 0
Paid John Baird for 107 ft halfinch plank
13
9
Paid William Simmons for drawing 1 load lathes from Cannonsmill
0
9
0
Paid Robert Steel for drawing sand & lime
2
17 9
Paid John White for 6 bushels Lime.
3
0
To Andrew Swearingen as pr bill. 18 8 10
701 8 93
1 0
22
COURTS OF JUSTICE, BENCH, AND BAR.
Jany 24th 1800 Andrew Sweringen Esq and John Hoge this day settled their acct in which the foregoing is included and a balance appears to be due the said Swearingen of one hundred Dollars JNO. HOGE.1
- Note the fact that the account of the payments, running from 1786 to 1789 inclusive, is in pounds, shillings, and pence, while the memorandum given by Mr. Hoge for the balance due to Mr. Swearingen, dated January 24, 1800, is in dollars; this, in connection with the fact that, during the Revolution and the period of the Articles of Confederation, each colony or state used its own colonial or the English currency; its "dollars" were the dollars of Spain, chiefly; and not until the Act of Congress of July 6, 1785, was the U. S. ($) "Dollar" established as the ideal money unit of "The United States of America;" but not until the Act of April 2, 1792, was the United States Mint authorized, establishing a national coin- age, the first coinage both in silver and gold being somewhere in the period 1793 to 1795.
Pounds, shillings, and pence are found in certain of our old Pennsylvania statutes and official papers still in force and use; for instance, the penalty of one hundred pounds to be imposed upon a non-attending witness duly subpoenaed; but under a post-Revolution order made by the Supreme Executive Coun- cil of Pennsylvania, the pound so mentioned was made of the value of $2.66g, so that 100 pounds was of the value of $266.66§: See Chapman v. Calder, 14 Pa. 357.
1 Note that it is altogether probable that the foregoing account embraced all the expenditures for the court-house of 1787; for the phrase in the receipt, "in which the foregoing is included," indicates that in the settlement on which the balance of $100 resulted, were embraced not only all the expenditures for the court-house, but all other open matters between the parties as well.
A hundred years hence it will be said with confidence, as being shown by the records, that while 10334 gallons of whiskey, including the seven quarts that White drank, were consumed in the erection of our first public buildings at the beginning of the Nineteenth Century, none at all was con- sumed in the erection of the magnificent new public buildings put up at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. See "Total Cost of the Court-House and Jail of 1900," in Chapter XI., hereafter.
WILLIAM BAIRD,
ADMITTED, 1812; DIED, 1834. [Half-tone by Bragdon, from photograph by Hallam of oil painting with the widow of ex-Gov. J. J. Jacobs, Wheeling, W. Va.]
23
OUR FIRST COURT-HOUSE.
Wherefore, if in the foregoing account the Pennsylvania currency were meant, the cost of our first court-house and jail was $1,871.20; but if the English currency were used, the English pound being valued by the Act of Congress of July 31, 1789, at $4.44, then our first court-house and jail cost our forefathers $3,115.56, in labor and materials.
Would that we could reproduce some ancient picture of this our first court-house! But those who builded it were not thinking much of us at the time, and they left us nothing by which to judge of their taste or liberality; they had other things to look after. However, through the "art preserv- ative," though without illustrations of the early days in the way of pictures, there have come down to us from the printed page a few words now and then which tell us something of the costumes as well as of the customs of this obscure past.
Hon. Samuel Wilkeson, writing of his "Early Recollec- tions of the West," in 2 American Pioneer, 159, says:
"So great was the destitution of comfortable clothing, that when the first Court of Common Pleas was held at Catfish, now Washington, a highly respectable citizen whose presence was required as a magistrate, could not attend court without first borrowing a pair of leather breeches from an equally respectable neighbor who was summoned on the grand jury. The latter lent them, and having no other had to stay at home." See also Smith's Old Redstone, 37-44.
This Samuel Wilkeson was born at or near Carlisle about 1779, and came with his parents to the Chartiers Valley in 1784. One of the three pack-horses "was rigged out," he writes, "with a pack-saddle, and two large creels made of hickory withes in the fashion of a crate, one on either side, in which were stowed the beds and bedding and the wearing apparel of the family. In the centre of these creels there was an aperture prepared for myself and sister, and the top was well secured by lacing to keep us in our places, so that only our heads appeared above."
At the time of the Whiskey Insurrection Wilkeson lived
24
COURTS OF JUSTICE, BENCH, AND BAR.
somewhere below Canonsburg, and a note in the History of Jefferson College states that at one time he had been inden- tured to Colonel George Morgan. In time he removed to Western New York, became a judge or justice of the peace at Buffalo, in Erie County, in that state, and he served also in the Senate of New York.
OUR SECOND COURT-HOUSE.
The Rev. Thaddeus Dodd taught a classical school in a room in the first court-house for a short period, and was suc- ceeded in the school by Rev. David Johnston, who con- tinued at its head until the winter of 1790-91, when the building was burned and Mr. Johnston became the principal of the academy established at Canonsburg: Creigh, 137; Crumrine, 441. This burning made it necessary that a new court-house should be erected, which was begun at once and completed in 1794. Its cost, it is said, was about £3,000, or say about $8,000, the Pennsylvania pound being $2.663, or about $13,320 in the English currency. An entry upon the commissioners' books indicates that the time of its entire completion was of date July 19, 1794, in the heated period of the Whiskey Insurrection, the entry showing that carpenters were employed "to work on the cupola of the court-house, finish the same, and have the vane gilded."
Our second court-house, with its related buildings, some of them perhaps built before it, was, as we shall see, of no mean significance for its day and generation.
On August 24, 1901, the writer had an interview with Mr. Samuel R. Witherow, born in 1808, and brought to Washing- ton, Pennsylvania, in 1811, one year after the town became a borough, and still living on North Main Street at the age of ninety-three, weak physically, but with his memory well pre- served. Since then the writer has met a gentleman of the bar, retired from practice for many years, born and brought up in Washington, and reasonably familiar with the second
THOMAS McK. T. McKENNAN, ADMITTED, 1814; DIED, 1852. [Half-tone by Bragdon, from steel-plate print furnished by family of Dr. Thomas McKennan.]
25
OUR SECOND COURT-HOUSE.
court-house and surroundings in his boyhood; and to him the writer is indebted for the following details confirming the re- lation of Mr. Witherow:
The court-house was of two stories and built of brick, about fifty feet in front, extending back about seventy feet, and standing in the middle of the lot, fronting on Main Street, and back about twenty-five feet from the pavement or property line. In front of the building, at a wide entrance, was a plat- form reached from the street level by four or five stone steps at the sides and in front. On each side of the platform was one large window, admitting light to the front of the court-room.
Entering by the door, a small vestibule was reached, with baize-covered doors on the right and left, admitting to a brick-paved floor extending back half the depth, perhaps, of the building. On each side of this large paved portion of the room were long seats set lengthwise the building, for the ac- commodation of the public generally, leaving an open space for convenient access to the court and bar occupying the rear one-half, perhaps, of the building, and reached by a rise of one step from the paved floor. This rear part of the court- room was floored with boards, and was separated from the brick-paved part in front by a railing along the step or rise mentioned. The bench was at the rear of the building, facing the entrance, with a large window on each side of it; the mem- bers of the bar sat in front, and on the left was the jury-box, a cumbrous inclosed affair, the seats behind rising above those in front. Parties and witnesses were admitted to seats to the right of the bench. The jury-rooms were on the second floor.
One striking feature of this court-house was its " cupola " and weather-vane. The roof of the building did not ascend to a sharp comb or crest at the top, as did that of the third court-house, hereafter to be shown. It went up a distance on each side and thence the roof was flat, or nearly so, from the front of the building to the rear end; and often did the boys of the town, our informants among them, obtain access to this flat top of the court-house as to a stolen play-ground.
From the level part of the roof at the front of the build-
26
COURTS OF JUSTICE, BENCH, AND BAR.
ing ascended the steeple, about as high from the roof to the top as the height of the building itself from the ground, and as sharply pointed as the ordinary church steeple. It was supported by a series of strong wooden pillars around its base, within which was the large court-house bell. On the extreme top was a metal arrow for a weather-vane, and below the arrow was a round globe or ball of tin, perhaps two feet in diameter, and gilded. One youngster, fond of firing his rifle at a target set up on the rear of his father's property, nearly opposite the court-house, was impelled to turn his gun upon this golden globe occasionally, when he thought he would not be observed. Of course he had a mate in his sport. The mate says that when in 1839 it became necessary to remove the building to erect the third court-house in its place, he was an interested observer of the performance throughout. The steeple was entered from the belfry, and from the inside, near the top, openings were cut outward, through which a strong cable was passed, reaching to the street in front on either side. The pillars at the base, extending down into the building, were then sawn into until nearly free, when, by the two cables, the steeple was pulled by many men over into the street. It struck, top foremost, upon the platform at the front door, crushing it, and, to the surprise of the observers, the entire steeple turned over, with the base on the east side of the street. It had been put together in the old way, not with eightpenny nails, but with wrought-iron spikes.
The marksman's mate was anxious to know whether there were any bullet holes in the golden globe or not, and at once rushed to the top of the steeple at the front door. Finding the arrow first, he effectively appropriated it, as he thought, as his own, but Mr. John L. Gow, the lawyer, then the burgess of the borough, captured him and the arrow both, but released him alone. Finding the globe, however, his gratification out of the downfall of the steeple was in seeing that the golden globe had been pierced by many bullets.
So much for the old court-house. But a word as to the old bell that hung in the base of the old steeple. What became
JOHN S. BRADY, ADMITTED, 1817; DIED, 1867. [Half-tone by Bragdon, from photograph in possession of Mr. Alexander Wilson (1853).]
27
OUR SECOND COURT-HOUSE.
of it? Was it preserved and transferred to the third court- house, of our day, to call us from refreshment to labor or to hear a verdict awaited till the night-time? And was it car- ried, in 1898 when the third court-house was carted away, to other uses, the calling together of the school children of South Washington ? At all events, in the olden time, it brought before Judges Addison, and Roberts, and Baird, and Nathaniel Ewing, at the beginning of his term, not only lawyers, jury- men, parties, and witnesses to the business of the day, but its tones were always to be heard when there were fires or funerals.
On the occasion of fires the bell-man rang the bell vigor- ously, the alarm being carried to the bucket brigade asleep even in the town limits. And when death came to a family and a loved one was to be carried to the old burial-place on West Walnut Street, in sight of the belfry, some one would signal to the bell-man from a convenient point near the family residence, the moment the body was borne from the dwelling, when the bell-man would toll the bell in measured tones con- tinuously until the receipt of a signal that the family had left the loved one in the grave.
" Hear the loud alarum bells- Brazen bells !
What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells ! In the startled ear of night, How they scream out their affright !
Too much horrified to speak, They can only shriek, shriek, Out of tune, In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire !
" Hear the tolling of the bells- Iron bells ! What a world of solemn thought their monody compels !"
Approaching the court-house in front, there were a number of buildings in the parts of the public square to the north and south of it.
28
COURTS OF JUSTICE, BENCH, AND BAR.
On the south of the building there was first an open passage of about ten feet, left unused and unobstructed, doubt- less to afford light and air to the court-room. Then there was a rather high one-story brick building, about thirty-eight feet in front, containing three public offices; first, going to the south, the prothonotary's office, then the clerk's office, then the office of the register of wills and recorder of deeds. Next was an alley about ten feet wide, used at first as a driveway from the borough scales placed near the rear lot-line behind the old jail; and to the south of this alley was a two-story brick building, about thirty-six feet in front, divided into three rooms. The uses for which the first room was originally intended are not remembered, but at a later date it was occu- pied by one of the then funny men of the town, an Irishman of the name of Jimmy Brown, bald-headed but red-topped, as a kind of grocery, selling fish and molasses, etc. The next room, a large one, accommodated the county commissioners and county treasurer; and the room reaching to Cherry Alley, except for a very narrow outside stairway to the room over it, was occupied by Samuel Surratt, the borough weigh-master. Surratt had previously kept a tavern on the lot opposite where the Washington Female Seminary now stands, under the sign, "SSURRATTSINN." He was short in stature, weighing over three hundred pounds, and was good to the youngster who now describes him to the writer. He lived in the room over the weigh-master's office, from which office he toddled around to the weigh-scales to see after a load of coal or hay. He died in the upstairs room, and the youngster felt that it was cruelty to his friend when, the stairway being too narrow to take the weigh-master down by the only way he could have gotten down had he been well, he saw him let straight down, feet foremost in his burial-case, to be carried to his last home.
The weigh-scales of the borough were reached by a drive- way off Cherry Alley, and the load being weighed was carried thence to Main Street by the ten-foot alleyway heretofore mentioned, to the left of the register and recorder's one-story office. At a later day this alley was closed by a small frame
29
OUR SECOND COURT-HOUSE.
building of one room, lower in its roof than the one-story building to the right of it, and the little room thus made was occupied by Alfred Gault, another funny man, as a watch- maker's shop.
Turning back, now, to the north of the court-house, there was first another unused and unobstructed ten-foot passage- way for light and air to the court-room. Then, passing to the north, there was a frame building, perhaps twenty-five feet by forty, containing the sheriff's office, his stable being back on the rear corner of the public square and on Cherry Alley. Then there was another ten-foot passageway, between the sheriff's office and a frame market-house, that reached to the property line on Beau Street. All these buildings to the right, when facing the court-house, as well as those to the left, reach- ing to Cherry Alley, were set back from Main Street flush with the front of the court-house.
The market-house was about fifty feet in frout on Main Street by about forty feet on Beau Street, and was of two stories, so to speak. The upper story was of frame, supported all around upon brick pillars about four feet square, and the lower floor, thus open to the weather, was paved with brick. There was a covered porch all along the Beau Street side, pro- jecting partly over the sidewalk, and on the Main Street side the porch reached nearly to the south corner in front, where it was met by a stairway from the pavement below.
This upper floor was divided into four large rooms, in one of which Mr. Witherow attended a school taught by Stephen Woods, an old-time surveyor, and at another time by a John Irwin. In 1820, while thus attending school, he witnessed the burning of the "Pennsylvania and Kentucky Inn," directly opposite, kept by John Fleming, whose six-year old daughter was burned to death, the fire breaking out during the marriage of an elder daughter. And in 1823 he was one of the town- boys who followed the sled conveying William Crawford, con- victed before Judge Thomas H. Baird of the murder of his son, to execution on Gallows Hill, south of town, the second
30
COURTS OF JUSTICE, BENCH, AND BAR.
execution in the county; and as Crawford was sitting on his coffin on the sled, coolly munching apples, and as the boys ran past at the beginning of the ascent of the hill just at the foot of the town, he said to them, "Boys, you needn't run; there'll be no fun till I get there."
Another room on the second floor of this old market-house was occupied as a chair factory by Isaiah Steen, who owned the property late of Mr. John H. Ewing on the west side of East Beau Street, half a square from Main. On pleasant days several amiable old fellows would keep Mr. Steen in good com- pany by sitting with him on splint-bottomed chairs at such points along the old porch as would be out of the direct rays of the sun; and at a certain hour of the day one of them would quietly pass a nudge along the line, which they would all understand, and one by one would rise, pass down the stair- way, and march up street in quiet procession to the old tavern at the corner of Chestnut Street, famous in its day, to-cut a melon, or something. There were some, indeed many, funny men still living in Washington forty years ago; they now are all gone, with none to take their places.
Behind this market-house, at a little distance from it and extending from the property line on Beau Street southward nearly or quite to the north line of the court-house, were the outer walls of the jail, builded in 1824. The walls were per- haps fifteen feet high, about three feet thick, and of limestone. The jail itself was inside these walls, with an area open to the sky around it, except at the end reaching to the outer wall on Beau Street. It was of two stories, with walls and partitions of limestone four feet thick, and cells around within it, upstairs and downstairs. This jail and its inclosure remained until torn away for the new jail in 1867-68.
Such was the old second court-house, with its surround- ings, completed, except the jail referred to, in 1794. In the court-room, with the paved floor in front of the bar railing, were heard before the court and jury, prior to 1839, the voices of James Ross, admitted to the bar in 1784; Alex-
JOHN L. GOW, ADMITTED, 1825; DIED, 1866. [Half-tone by Bragdon, from photograph presented by Mrs. Gow, now deceased.]
31
OUR SECOND COURT-HOUSE.
ander Addison, 1787; Joseph Pentecost, 1792; Parker Camp- bell, 1794; James Ashbrook, 1798; Obadiah Jennings and James Mountain, 1801; Thomas McGiffin, 1807; Philip Dod- dridge, 1811; William Baird, 1812; T. McK. T. McKennan, 1814; John S. Brady, 1817; John L. Gow, 1825; Isaac Leet and Alexander Wilson, 1826; James Watson, 1831; Alexander W. Acheson, 1832; and William McKennan, 1837.
These men were all distinguished lawyers in their day, really great in legal learning and in personal worth and ability. The most of them occupied during their lives posi- tions of prominence and importance, not only at the bar of this county, but in the affairs of the state and nation, in periods of much controversy within and without. They are but few, however, of the many admissions to the bar of Wash- ington County prior to 1840.
III. OUR JUDICIAL SYSTEM AND EARLY JUDGES.
While it was not intended to write a detailed history of the bench and bar of Washington County, yet as we have been so fortunate as to obtain what at first was thought to be impos- sible, the portraits of all the judges, learned in the law, that have ever presided over our courts, and of many of the early and distinguished members of the bar, half-tones from which are presented to illustrate this volume, a brief sketch of our judicial system from the beginning will here be given, abbre- viated from Crumrine's History of Washington County, pp. 235-255.
Under the first constitution of Pennsylvania, formed on September 28, 1776, by a delegate convention of the people meeting at Philadelphia on July 15, 1776, the executive power of the state was lodged in a body called the Supreme Execu- tive Council; and Section 30 of that constitution provided that out of two or more persons chosen for each ward, township, or district, the president in council should "commissionate " one as a justice of the peace for each ward, township, or district, to serve for seven years, removable for misconduct by the general assembly. All these justices of the peace could sit as judges in the Court of Quarter Sessions, then regarded as the principal court, though only such as were specially selected and commissioned therefor could hear causes in the Common Pleas and Orphans' courts.
It will be observed that the electors of each township, or ward of a borough, were to choose two or more persons whose names were to be submitted to the Supreme Executive Council, and from them one was to be selected by the council, at its
32
ISAAC LEET, ADMITTED, 1826; DIED, 1844. [Half-tone by Bragdon, from photograph by Hallam of oil painting with Mrs. J. B. Wilson, Washington, l'a., a daughter.]
33
OUR JUDICIAL SYSTEM AND EARLY JUDGES.
pleasure, to be commissioned to serve as a justice of the peace for the township or borough, and also to sit as a judge of the courts of record for the term of seven years; but there was no provision requiring the person thus commissioned to be learned in the law, or to have been educated specially for the profession of the law.
Thus it was that at the spring election for justices held in 1785, there were two persons chosen in the township of Done- gal, Colonel David Williamson and William Johnston, Esq. Williamson had led the frontiersmen in the unfortunate expe- dition against the Moravian Indians at Gnadenhutten, Ohio, in March, 1782, resulting in a massacre of which this county has had to bear the disgrace for more than a century. William Johnston, the other nominee, was a man of high character, who had already served as a justice of the peace and in other public positions; and in this election Colonel Wil- liamson received forty-two votes and Mr. Johnston but twenty- six. It then became the duty of Thomas Scott, the pro- thonotary and clerk of the courts, to transmit the result of the election to the Supreme Executive Council, which he did in a letter, the original draft of which was as follows, the words first used but erased being left in [ ] :
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